Sharon Hayes‘I March In The Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I’m Not Free’, 2007/8Audio installation (1 PA system)Spray paint on paperDimensions (frame size), 50,8 x 60 cm (20” x 24”)Edition of 5 + 1 APHAYES-2008-0009

I March In The Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I’m Not Free, was a eight-part performance that took place between December 2007 and January 2008, where Hayes walked from the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York to sites of public speech such as Union Square, Tompkins Square, Confucius Square in Chinatown, and Christopher Street Park.

In this work, I stood on the street with a bullhorn in New York City and spoke a love letter to an anonymous ‘you’. I look like I’m doing ‘public speech’ but I’m speaking to a lover who I’ve been separated from for some reason that the texts don’t quite explain. While I’m talking about love and desire, I am also bringing up the war and the way in which the war interrupts and doesn’t interrupt our daily lives, our activities, our desires, our love. For me, this work attempts to speak about certain intersections between love and politics that aren’t so often talked about. (Hayes)

Continuing the artist’s interrogation of the infinitesimal distance that separates the public from the private, this work is a reflection on the difference between speaking and listening — a kind of confession combining the idiom of politics, the transmission of secrets, and the language of love.

The subsequent audio installation is comprised of one PA system, speaker, and a single framed spray-painted work on paper.

Sharon Hayes ‘I March In The Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I’m Not Free’, 2007/8 (audio excerpt)

Sharon Hayes
‘I March In The Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I'm Not Free’, 2007/2008
Silkscreen print
60 x 51 cm (frame size)
Edition of 7
HAYES-2009-0022

Sharon Hayes
‘I March In The Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I’m Not Free’, 2007/8
(photo by Andrea Geyer)

Sharon Hayes
‘I March In The Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I’m Not Free’, 2007/8
(photo by Andrea Geyer)

Sharon Hayes
‘I March In The Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I’m Not Free’, 2007/8
(photo by Andrea Geyer)

Sharon Hayes
‘I March In The Parade of Liberty But As Long As I Love You I’m Not Free’, 2007/8
(photo by Andrea Geyer)